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exercise flexibility. For example, the CCDBG Act requires facilities receiving CCDF funds to participate in QRIS. Accordingly, the State Superintendent has limited the requirement to participate in QRIS to facilities that receive CCDF funding, while providing the opportunity for all licensed facilities to participate. However, when a requirement is mandated only for facilities receiving CCDF funding, the federal government encourages states to apply the requirements to all licensed facilities. Because the District’s goal is to provide safe and high quality care to all children in the District, mandating the same health and safety requirements across all licensed facilities in the District is necessary to avoid a bifurcated system in which subsidy eligible children have access to only a portion of child care providers who meet applicable standards. ACF used this rationale to mandate criminal background checks for all licensed providers across the country.

This final rulemaking also aligns with recommendations produced with the expertise of researchers, physicians, and practitioners set forth in Caring for Our Children: National Health and Safety Performance Standards; Guidelines for Early Care and Education Programs, 3rd Edition (American Academy of Pediatrics, American Public Health Association, National Resource Center for Health and Safety in Child Care and Early Education, Washington DC (2011) (available at http://cfoc.nrckids.org/StandardView.cfm) (“Caring for Our Children”). Caring for Our Children is a set of recommendations intended to create a common framework to align basic health and safety efforts across all early childhood settings. Recently, ACF published “Caring for Our Children Basics” (“CfoC Basics”) (available at www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/ files/ecd/caring_for_our_children_basics.pdf) to provide the minimum, baseline standards for health and safety based on Caring for Our Children. ACF recommends that states looking for guidance on establishing health and safety standards consult CfoC Basics. However, ACF encourages states to go beyond the baseline standards to develop a comprehensive and robust set of health and safety standards that cover additional areas related to program design, caregiver safety, and child developmental needs, using Caring for Our Children.

As with the reauthorized CCDBG Act, this final rulemaking is intended to be an integral part of supporting families, promoting both the healthy development of children in the District of Columbia and parents' pathways to the middle class, and improving the overall quality of child care in the District.

III. Summary of the Rulemaking

This final rulemaking creates a new Chapter 1 (Child Development Facilities: Licensing) of Title 5-A DCMR, which sets forth the framework for obtaining and maintaining a license to operate a Child Development Facility in the District, and the requirements and standards that apply to all licensed child development facilities including the new CCDBG requirements. More specifically, the sections of Chapter 1 of Title 5-A DCMR are organized into the following subject areas accordingly:

(1) General Licensure Provisions: §§ 100-102 and § 199 (2) License Application and Maintenance: §§ 103-117 (3) Requirements for All Licensees: §§ 118-121 (4) Facilities, Supplies, Equipment and Environmental Health: §§ 122-126